The Emergence of Leia
by knitzkampf
Summary: Usually so purposeful, Leia falters in the wake of Alderaan's destruction. Though not dead, she seeks a way to be reborn.


Quiet fell in the ship, and she felt wide-eyed with terror.

She almost turned around, to engage the captain again, anything to stop this quiet, giant in accusation.

She left the cockpit, barely aware of Luke's quiet assertion, of caring, because apparently she told him the captain didn't. She didn't remember, though it was only a moment ago. A blip in time, which she had learned was enough to change everything.

"Sister," he'd said. A silly thing to call her, when he called her so many things already. It was- just silly. Childish. Slang? Spacer slang? She was young, younger than the captain, and she definitely didn't move in the same circles he did; maybe she wasn't privy to some of the modern talk.

Sister? _Not this ship, sister._

He didn't believer her assertion. She wasn't wrong. But it was all the mistakes, her mistakes, that just- negated her. Made no one listen, understand. She'd made the hugest, and it gave her such clarity, but she was cursed so that no one listened.

Sister. No one had ever called her that. Ever- there was no reason.

 _I don't have a sister,_ her mind had whispered though she had managed to shake her head at him, judge him for his obstinance, his refusal to see what was so plain in sight. _I don't Have. There is nothing more to have._

Did he know her name? She didn't know his. But he knew she was royalty. Someone had told him she was a princess. Their first interaction, and he'd said "Your Highness."

Was. Past tense because the Princess was dead. Not Leia, though, who was the Princess, and she just didn't understand _how._ How she was here. Why.

She was just Leia now. Princess, Senator, Alderaan. All the rest fell away, meaningless.

 _Meaningless_. How to be, to live, when there was no meaning, no sense. But it was all so _clear,_ like eternal knowledge. Clear, but still out of reach. She could see it; she wanted it; but that giant quiet held it from her, dangled it not even tantalizingly. Just without permission. It was not to be hers.

And she was so alone. Everything and everyone gone, and she was left behind. No one to claim her, nothing to call hers. And all she wanted was to belong, to be a part of. _Take me with you,_ she whispered to anyone who was dead. _Please. Don't leave me here._

She didn't know where she was, but she was on a ship. That part didn't matter. She knew how she had gotten there, and that part did.

There were no pieces to pick up, but she would have to find some. Find a way where she could join them, and if that didn't happen, find something. Become a Leia. A Leia she could live with.

The freighter was by no means big, smaller even than the last one she was on, which only carried passengers, but that one had a captain, and a navigation officer, and an engineer, and a communications officer. She too had attendants, ones to dress her, do her hair, apply scents and colors.

She'd changed, without help, into her senatorial gown when she received word the star destroyer wanted to board.

That was her first mistake, to give orders to continue on the journey. To defend if they attempted forcible entry. She could handle that mistake. She'd seen others make ones like it. And it would be tough, the aftermath. But there had been other decisions after that... she felt herself falter, fall deeper into the nothingness, and she tried to climb out.

The ship. It cost the ship. And the crew, and the pass- Her attendants. She fell again, into that pit.

They were quiet- quieted- but here, following her. They would ask, let me dress you, brush your hair, apply cream to your feet, keep them smooth and soft and beautiful for all time, a Princess must be beautiful, a Princess must be wise...

To silence them she asked the ship, _where am I?_ The main layout was in a circle; if she kept walking she would get nowhere.

Oh, but that was so true. And horrible. A hell, that's what she was in. Clear, eternal knowledge was hell. Princess Leia was in hell.

 _Princess Leia is no more,_ she whispered to herself, and made herself sit on the lounge bench. No circles. Straight lines. Always move straight and forward, her father used to tell her.

She sat for a while and there was activity around her though no one spoke to her, asked her anything. She was a living ghost, in hell. A part of her, small and tiny and undeserving and unheard called, _someone get me out of here. I'm dying. Forever._

The lighting was bad and the ride was not smooth, not at all like the Tantive IV, where that captain, Antilles, was calm, and he didn't do much except stay in the cockpit, _on the bridge_ her attendants and she had joked; he didn't wander around, talking, and he didn't fix things, not in flight, certainly, and anyway there was a crew. They had all gone to arms, they were all gone.

This ship was- was different. More than a ship, more than a craft. It contained life. The captain's world. His survival, business, his identity. And he fought for it. He was lucky. The Empire had caused some damage, but he was already at repairs.

Not smooth, not exactly efficient, though the Wookiee copilot and human captain were undeniably a team. They moved about and yelled and argued. She couldn't understand the Wookiee but the captain said things like, _look in my office_ and he meant the cockpit or _did you check the hatch of malfunction_ or _help yourself, kid, got plenty of those._

There were wires on what made up the walls. She spent her time staring at the wires, exposed and vulnerable, but dangerous too, and powerful. She was trying to think if the wires were supposed to be like that; out. Was it a technological convenience? A mode of decor? Could it be this captain was that careless? Did he not care about anything? _anything?_ Like convention and safety and method or passengers or people?

All those people. In their houses, or on the street; at work and school. And she-

She went back to being on a ship but not really being there; something had happened to her, something horrible, and she felt like she was just waking up, only to be plummeted inside another nightmare. Her body jostled in the roughness of the ride, and she stared at the walls and wires and knowing what was outside.

Space was outside, and stars and planets. And an Empire, which didn't belong as part of space; it was made up of men, but it was big enough that it was able to say how space should look. So though it wasn't natural, it wasn't a god, a creator; instead it- it had become part of space and when she thought that, realized how children would grow up, learn what happened, she wanted to throw up.

She sat, her knees bending according to the fold in the bench, her back just grazing the seat rest, and her shoulders hurt. Not from Vader's fingers which had bruised her as he held her still and they watched death's laser streak toward Alderaan, though that's the reason Luke had suggested. She had shaken her head _no_ very rapidly, causing the view of the wires to blur, and she liked that, and tried to count them. In some places they were bundled together, like in a bale, gathers of flax cut and tied, memories of Alderaan, standing on their end, waiting.

And then- she didn't know what caused this to happen, but they would leave their fisted bundle and stream on their own, like a river, many rivers, or bands of color across a sky. The wires had colors too: white, red, several yellows, a blue and black. One green. She chose green because it was a good color and coursed along its path from her seat, shoulders aching and back straight, no support, until green ended, in a useless dangle; a twist of three- was it just three?- golden wires stripped from their cover. _Oh, wires,_ she sobbed internally. _I'm sorry but yes. Me, too._ They looked like hair, unkempt and not cared for; they looked like lightning, gold and destructive; they looked like fingers, limp and lifeless.

At some point Luke had left her side; he hadn't touched her shoulders but murmured something about knowing and sorrow and her head switched from moving side to side to nodding, barely moving up and down, her lips together, not relaxed, but composed, and her eyes were on the golden wires and she was thinking they needed their green sheath, they needed to not dangle like that, uselessly. They needed to do their job, which was to wrap around some metal and complete their circuit and connect something to something.

There were other reasons her shoulders might hurt, and her mind ran through them quickly, trying to pinpoint the pain. The slab she slept awkwardly on, the rough treatment from the stormtroopers, the fall into that horrible garbage chamber, the desperate swing across the disconnected walkway, clinging for dear life.

For dear life. Her shoulders burned. _I shouldn't have,_ she wanted to say, _I'm sorry._ She wanted to kneel in front of her mother the queen and she wanted to see that one brow up, the one that signaled motherhood and love and not discipline and comportment; the one that understood that even Princesses were children and how sorry she was to make her lovely, free, vivacious daughter stand on one knee and tell her that no matter how badly she wanted to, a princess should never shove a viscount's son in a briar patch.

Her mother had died years ago. _Show me how, Mother. I am on my knees._ The wires blurred again as water flooded her eyes, and she pressed her lips together, trying to dam it. Shame and guilt and sorrow was on the throne now, and she knelt before it, and there was nothing she could say, ever; she would kneel in that position forever, seeking forgiveness, silence and anger staring from above.

"Here." A voice broke through- how many words had she missed? Not Luke's- his was soft and friendly, but cautious. The captain's was more like fingers snapping in front of her face: sharp and warning; demanding her attention, calling from the edges of her black pit.

Something landed in her lap. Not placed gently, or offered. Just dropped, with a deep "here" and on their own her hands explored her new package while her eyes sought what had blocked the wires. She was seated and he was standing, both heights exaggerated; she small and seated, unable to lift her shoulders, he long and straight. Her eyes were at his middle, and she lifted them quickly, embarrassed to note the color of trousers, the style of the buckle that clasped around his hips, the small stains that dotted the worn leather of the holster strapped around his thigh. She sought his face, coursed past a wrinkled white shirt and the ridges of his sternum, up his neck, lighting a moment on the scar on his chin, and met his eyes.

His face would be handsome, if it weren't so unreadable. Some kind of... something; she lost her idea; she wondered if it was pain, like hers in her shoulders, that would round her posture the rest of her life. If that was why he looked like she couldn't know him, wouldn't get to know him.

Luke was there too, many steps behind, but the way he was peering at her from behind the captain, comically bent to the side from his hips, his hands clasped; she would recall this moment, the earnest expression on his face- so readable. Hopeful and worried and sad and lost, but she knew now that he had gotten up from his seat next to her, and when she didn't respond to his murmurs, just shook her head, repeatedly, or nodded it, not able to stop, he had gone and said something to the captain.

And the captain had brought her a pillow.

"Here," he said and paused to watch her react.

That was what was so unfair about him, she suddenly realized. That before whatever closed him up, made that handsome face only interesting because of the scar on it, he used his interactions; studied and observed them, tucked them inside him to use for future purposes. An instinctive man, a very smart one; he saw her much more clearly than Luke had. He knew her posture of obeisance; he knew that she would kneel in penitence forever. Like a mirror when she looked in his eyes she saw herself and she wanted to lash out at him, if anything crack that facade, bring him to his knees.

But, despite his seeming dispassion, there was a pillow on her lap, so she said nothing.

He jerked a thumb, revealing a spanner curled in the fist of his hand. 'You can go back," he told her. Behind him yet many steps away, Luke nodded encouragingly.

It made no sense, to invite her to leave the seat, find a bunk, sleep, but bring her the pillow. And she realized he wasn't bringing her an offer of sleep, or of rest.

She pictured Luke scurrying to him, because that's how he moved; he was anxious to help and so caring, worried steps rushing toward a solution. _The Princess,_ he would tell the captain. What would he say? That she was going into shock? Having a breakdown? Kept moving her head and wouldn't stop? Or just, _I don't know- something's wrong._ Because Luke was so young, had been so sheltered. He hadn't the experience in human nature and he wasn't smart in the same way the captain was but he was so compassionate.

 _Captain-_ No, she hadn't heard Luke call him that. Maybe his name; what was his name, anyway- _Insert name here, there's something wrong with the Princess._

And the captain brought her a pillow.

It was like a sigh, when she squeezed it, a soft exhale of comfort. She didn't thank him- wouldn't, because he knew exactly what she needed when she knew nothing of him at all, not even his name. But she moved to the rear of the seat, her back against it, holding her up, her arms curling around the pillow, her shoulders allowed to rest against the pillow's bulk.

She sat with the pillow, held it close. Her arms pressed around it; some might say she was hugging it but it was the other way around. It hugged her. Sometimes Luke sat with her and they talked. The captain took a break and sat on the floor across from her, the gold wires from the green duroplast sheath tickling his hair. His name was Han Solo. The two men talked and she listened, because it kept the silence away. They spoke of the Empire, and ships, and General Kenobi, and Luke's aunt and uncle.

She saw it in Luke, too; that blame. Everything he said, she knew. He wasn't home when it happened, he should have been, he should be dead, if only he was home, if only they weren't, if only they weren't dead. Thoughts circling around, useless and without destination. You could think them but they couldn't _be_ anything because something- gods, or fate, or men-

"Stop," the captain said angrily. "It's done."

He was just a man. Not a messenger or an angel or even an explanation. He was uncomfortable and he didn't like it but he had coursed that circle before; he had looked down the precipice of that pit.

She was a wire. Her protective sheath had broken away and she was exposed. She was brittle; she could be snapped. She could be twisted, too; rejoined. If she wrapped her parts around the other wires, Luke's, they would be guiltier? Or thicker, stronger.

With the pillow squeezed tight against her middle, things blurred, like the wires through tears. She needed to follow one, from beginning to end, course a path of life. From Leia, who once upon a time was Leia, who lived with a great deal of thought, a knowledge that actions had consequences; to Leia, who could think no more and became nothing. She decided she was one of the golden wires. It, too, must have done something tremendously wrong; it must have made a terrible mistake to be stripped from its sheath, to hang uselessly, all memory false, all future a lie. She needed to understand she had died but woken, whatever they had done to her had eradicated all she used to be.

Sister. Yes, she decided she liked that. How confusing it must be, to look at her, and see Leia, when really that Leia was gone. She needed a new- not name- she would keep Leia- but outlook? Identity? Would a title be enough? Leia To Whom You May Direct Your Blame And Anger But Who Is Not Yet Dead So You Must Let Her Fight Until Either She Dies Or Finds A New Way To Live.

Or Beware Leia Whom Death Follows.

Luke was the same, and it was one source of comfort. Associate with him, he felt, and you'll die. And she was proud to be at his side, because she could prove to him, _no I won't;_ just as he proved to her, _not true._ Together they were some sort of club of death, or wrongful survivors. Together they failed to make each other's prophecy come true.

And neither Luke nor the captain knew Leia that was Princess of Alderaan. They met her after. They would never see her with attendants, never down on one knee. Those were the parts of her she wouldn't care for them to see. Not the gentle, innocent farm boy or the belligerent, stubborn captain. How she danced, and discoursed, yes. That, too, she had once been full of life. They saw- what, she wondered? A victim. A survivor. A shadow. A woman.

These weren't bad things, she decided. They were a start.

"Captain Solo," she stopped him as he passed by. "What are those wires for? The green one."

He did a slow pivot with his eyes toward the wall. Then he marched to a panel on the side wall she hadn't noticed, and opened it. "S'what I thought," he commented, more to himself, then turned back to her. "Auxiliary life support. Needed to redirect flow one time." He brought a hand to the back of his head. "For something. Don't remember. Never hooked it back up." He looked at the ceiling and swirled a wrist. "The main one works."

He flashed her a smile. It was knowing, and playful, and somehow challenging. As if he was daring Leia Who Sucks Life From All She Meets to prove she existed, and it made his face very interesting and handsome.

"It should be reconnected," she decided to him. "When the main does quit," _because everything comes to an end_ , she wanted to tell him, "you won't have time."

He thought she was insulting him, and his ship, and it was so gratifying, to be regarded as an insulting, sarcastic, haughty woman- a life; not a harbinger of death- and she found she enjoyed the exchange and she knew she would do it again. He breathed a freshness into her, a wisp of a breeze, a promise of hope and change.

"I ain't got time now, sweetheart," he countered, playing tit for tat, _sweetheart,_ how fun, and for a moment she wondered, as she looked into that animated, expressive smile, did she do that for him? Was she a signal, a change, would she bring something of his- to an end? A desired end?

"You seem to, though," he said thoughtfully now, a quick glance at the pillow.

Her breath caught and for a moment she couldn't speak. She was afraid. She should run. The wires- they were out, bent, broken. They were- It was done. He had decided. Take their power and end it; let something else have it. "Fix it?" she said.

He shrugged. "Not really a repair. Just a hook up." He winked at her.

"But the sheath," she protested. "The green. Doesn't that protect them? And around them? From the heat?"

"Yeah," he nodded inconsequentially. "I got more Durodip." He smiled again, and what did he mean? Devilish and mischievous. He was no man. He was more than captain. He was the enemy of that great silence. Around him the spirits of her attendants fell to a hush. "I'll even let you choose the color."

She kept the green. She liked it, and it was what it had been before, just like she was Leia, and though she felt different, knew she still looked like Leia.

He brought her wire nippers and crimpers, the Dip, and brought her over to the panel, which had a diagram of all the different colored wires and where they connected.

She stayed a moment after the indicator light went from red, to yellow- charging- to green, powered, and she touched the fresh application of green Durodip and saw that it had hardened already. It was smooth, and the color was brighter, stronger.

"Not bad," the captain complimented her as he looked over her shoulder. He was taller than she, and she didn't have to move out of his way for him to see. She stood, sandwiched comfortably between the wall of wires and his warm body.

When they received clearance to land at Yavin, she thought to return the pillow. She walked to crew quarters, still holding the pillow close, telling it she would have to let go. She was nothing, but she was still alive, and she would help death find her by following this through. Her old life was a dream, a beautiful one, but it was over.

She rolled her shoulders and found two sleeping areas. The first contained a large hammock, which brought a faint smile as she thought of the fierce Wookiee swaying in it. The second room, off the 'fresher, must be the captain's quarters, and the bed was missing a pillow.

It was a small room. The walls had no wires dangling outside it, and one blanket covered the bunk. It was spread to its full size, covering the mattress, and the rippled fabric told her it had been arranged hastily and a little sloppily. But it was endearing, and she found herself charmed by the effort.

She stood before the bed a moment, thinking. The pillow covering was light blue, an absurd color, the color of sky. But she would say nothing to the spacer about his choice; it was the color he chose to dream on when he slept. Then she lifted the blanket, placed the pillow on the bunk, giving it a last caress, and covered it with the blanket. She smoothed it out as best she could.

Leia Who Brought Death To Alderaan was the first down the ramp, Luke following wide-eyed and dazed. She spotted a familiar face, her father's war advisor, and it reminded her of who she was. Inside her the attendants demanded justice and they called for blood, and she promised them, as once she promised making sure the count's six sons were invited to the gala, and they were satisfied.

Her father and advisors had fought for ideas. It wasn't a true war yet. He gathered support, and he built alliances, and they all knew it was a matter of time. Even peace had a lifespan. Princess Leia, She Who Plunged The Galaxy Into War arrived on base. Her father's advisor's face was broken with grief but also relief. He greeted Leia in a genuine hug, and he was glad to see her.

"We have no time for sorrows," she told him.

Later, when Luke looked so scrawny in that flight suit and she tried not to think it would be the last she heard of his voice, she watched the captain's ship lift off and she told herself not to be sorry to see it go. It was a lesson she had learned. Life was temporary and quick, and often very cruel.

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"Here." Leia handed her husband a pillow. It wasn't blue, like the first one she encountered all those years ago, but green, because green had always been her favorite color. This pillow cover was an ombré, the green fading to an almost white, growing strong again in a wide, deep band. It depended on how you looked at it, she thought, which was something Han had taught her along the way. It might be that something took the green away, or it might be that white got added. Either way and the color changed.

"Thanks," Han took the pillow from her, raising his knees and adjusting his seat on the armchair to hug the pillow to him.

They sat by the window, and they hadn't turned the warmer on because the sun shone through the glass and Leia hoped it felt as good to him as it did to her, warming her from the inside, a glowing, lovely heat.

He was still so handsome, his face open and giving; handsomer even, because life left its lines and marks and he had a good life. Sometimes her heart broke, because she wondered if he hadn't met her, Leia Who Loved A Smuggler, would he have gone through all this? She knew what he would say. "Green or white, sweetheart, it looks the same in the end."

"That better?" she asked him simply.

"Loads," he answered. She took his hand, and he looked at her, his eyes liquid gold and green- she loved the green in them, and they sat in silence.

So much life, she reflected, and this was just another chapter, another piece. He called it his love letter from carbonite but she and the medics called it cancer. "It might be white," he told her when they got the diagnosis.

"Or it might be green," she said firmly. Something else he had taught her long ago, when there was no answer to your question, then you had to make one up.

They didn't know which way it would go. It could go either. She knew what she wanted; knew what he wanted. Of course, really - who would wish for the other-

But then she would remember the small Princess sitting on a bench on the Millennium Falcon, certain she was dead, wanting to scream every time she took a breath; scared and angry and so so hurt-

Her lip trembled.

"Hey," Han said, and she gave him a watery smile.

"I'm sorry."

"Always thinking," he teased.

"My only regret," she began to tell him.

"Thinking?"

She smiled. "No." She tried to put her thoughts in some semblance of order. It was hard to express feelings: the tenderness, sorrow, the bitterness she made fall to the bottom. "Why I didn't, in that moment, _remember_ the lessons of my parents. That I would ask for such darkness when I always had love."

"It was a big moment," Han allowed her.

"Yes. But they taught me love. They loved me so, and I would permit myself to hate. Even me."

"Yeah, but when you loved again," Han made an appreciative shake of his head, "you did it with a bang."

She laughed. "Let's dye our hair," she suggested. She moved her fingers through his graying hair.

"Speak for yourself," Han said. "It's a badge of honor."

"It is at that," she agreed.

"I'd dye it green, though," he said, that beyond-captain smile leering, challenging.

"How I love you," she spoke from the golden sunshine inside her, glowing and warm.

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This is kind of a giving thanks story, written on the holiday and thinking along those themes. I think Leia, whom we know and love as strong, at some point may have hit a dark point, and wanted to explore the unexpected ways she found help. I hope I came across successfully? Let me know with a comment and thanks for reading.


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